Poetry
three
MOUTH WEATHER (RENEE GLADMAN)
I wake up unwilling with a dog on my neck, everything moving sluggish molecular cold. The kitchen table is a desk so I don’t have to step from the stream of your commentary or the walls heating up in morning’s directions. A dog is about bringing the outside in while there is still an outside. Attention alters the temperature: movement on the level of vibration. Slight openings to press a cheek to and express the workday pores. Approach is a sensation. We’re heading in non-parallel directions, leaving touch on the table. I invite you into the space of my body, for study. Discovering operations of nearness and the adaptor I need to interface with your inner delight. Everything on the table helps me reach for it. A chihuahua sleeps for eighteen hours a day. I extend our bubble with a tongue and snowfall begins, leaving work obsolete. I like it when you tell me where your mouth has been. Begin can be replaced with any word that brings you closer
OPEN HOURS (PACO SALAS PÉREZ)
given a finitude of dances
I’d like as many you can give me
exhausted in the glad spent morning
from work in afternoon means time
for breakfast and arriving back at you
with the inside of me
in hours as material as these
love’s both concentric selfishness,
no time to love everyone even
if we’d like, and since you pointed to
the rabbit in the moon I’ve had
a new relationship to fullness
there are so many of us, oh good
but morning is a recurrent slip
from I forgo it. the hours
go on exchanging somewhere
for elsewhere in love’s index
I’m ready when you are
in the next place we go looking
TRUTH GAME (JOE BRAINARD)
OPTIMIST
I think I am an optimist because I see many cats, but 9 out of 10 are plastic bags
SOMETHING WRONG
With enough conviction, and for at least a little while, almost anyone can convince me I’ve done something wrong
PRIME DIRECTIVE
My prime directive is to not bother anyone. But I keep writing poetry
BLURTING
(I wish I didn’t)
DO IT
but I don’t know what I want until I’m doing it
BASIC
Reading Judith Butler made me trans
THE TRUTH
And “the truth”—why is the truth so narrow-minded?
RESTAURANT
If I were a restaurant, I wouldn’t go back to me
COMPANIONSHIP
It would be better to be completely encased
NEED
My therapist said I have a “gaping hole of need”
WHO ASKED YOU?
I like to think I keep my need hole pretty neat along the edges
I WAS ABOUT TO ORDER AN IMPOSSIBLE BAGEL
When a chihuahua woke me up from a dream of a basketball machine called Sensitive Boy Sensations, 50 cents to play
TODAY
Today is a good day to look at a photo of early Samuel R. Delany
BIG HANDS
That gif of a big hand squeezing juice from a shampoo ginger flower
AFFINITY POLITICS
My enduring affinity for art by gay men who don’t care about me
“COMMUNITY”
A lake full of identical jellyfish, looking at itself
CROWD OF THE DAMNED (1197)
I do miss Riis beach all fall, winter, and spring
EROTICS OF THE ABSENT MIND
If my mind is going to be elsewhere, you better believe I’m making the most of the hole it left
LIFE IS NOT NOBLE, SACRED, OR GOOD
And a cocksucker will always want more of it
